Google Adds Search Options

Google Adds Search Options

With all the talk that has beengoingonaboutcompetitors to Google’s crown, it’s excellent to see that the reigning super-heavyweight champ is not resting on its laurels, but adding new features. Whether these features continue the Google dominance, or signal desperate times will remain to be seen.
Last week Google announced nine new options in their Search Option. We’ll briefly examine each of them.

Past Hour and Specific Date Range

Obviously named, these two additions allow for you to limit your search results on a chronological basis. One example of when this could be useful is when you are looking for the latest sports results, or other breaking news. For the specific time period searches, it would allow you to find information if you know when it was posted. Considering how poor the majority of in-site search boxes are (we’re glaring right at you Wiki…) this gives you another option.

More Shopping Sites and Fewer Shopping Sites

Again, Google isn’t getting creative with the names: these two options give you exactly what you’d expect. If you select More Shopping Sites, not only will you see more commercial sites, but you’ll see prices displayed in the search results. If you click Fewer Shopping Sites, Google will filter out commerce sites. How this is executed remains to be seen, as some ecommerce sites are notorious for offering prices that are much cheaper than the actual prices, to get people in (mail in rebates are an example of this). Just because people are researching also doesn’t mean that an ecommerce can’t give them the information they are after (with a price).

Visited Pages and Not Yet Visited

Everyone has those times where they go to a great site and forget to bookmark it. By using Visited Pages filter, you’ll be able to see what pages you have seen before, so if your research is interrupted, you can go right back to where you have been. Not Yet Visited also can help you filter out any sites that you’ve seen in the past if you know that your questions haven’t been answered yet.

Books, Blogs and News

These filters allow for you to only get information from the appropriate source. Google has been investing heavily in their Google Books program, and this allows you to further focus your searches based on the source of the information.

The aspect that we find most impressive is that Google is not forcing any of these options onto users, as they have done in the past. The fact that Google is automatically adjusting user’s results based on their search location is disappointing, as people may be looking for regional results that are now harder to attain, as Google forces regional based searches onto users. As Google continues to make the correct information available to you, they will continue to remain the number one option in search.

We’ve been in the digital marketing field for over 18 years and worked with hundreds of Australian (and international) businesses to grow their web presence. Specialising in SEO, search ads (PPC), social media, content marketing, email marketing and conversion rate optimisation.

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We’ve been in the digital marketing field for over 18 years and worked with hundreds of Australian (and international) businesses to grow their web presence. Specialising in SEO, search ads (PPC), social media, content marketing, email marketing and conversion rate optimisation.